


Until I Know This Sure Uncertainty, I'll Entertain The Offered Fallacy

by MittenWraith



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Swap, Case Fic, Comedy of Errors, Fluff, Free Will, Human Castiel, Humor, Interrupting Sam, M/M, The Scheherazade of Supernatural, Witch Curses, references to Dean and Crowley's howling at the moon, yes i'm giving my own stupid meta tags to fanfic now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 22:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9205046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenWraith/pseuds/MittenWraith
Summary: Nothing had gone right all day. Dean had let the witch slip through his fingers, and he'd had to leave Sam and Cas behind to finish her off while he slogged off to her secret lair to get rid of the source of her powers. It was literal garbage duty, but it still had to be done. It didn't make it any easier to know that Sam and Cas were in her line of fire while Dean was relatively safe (if appalled by the state of her housekeeping). So of course if something else could go wrong for Dean, it would.Why was it always witches?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizbobjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/gifts).



> Special thanks to [@elizabethrobertajones](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com) (aka lizbobjones here on ao3) (go read her things when you're done with this) for the idea and pointing out the unintentional pov shifts. I suffer from Accidental Castiel POV Syndrome. >.>
> 
> And to [@rosie-berber](http://rosie-berber.tumblr.com) for beta reading. All mistakes are still my own (or are malicious formatting issues inflicted on this work by copy/pasting it into AO3 :D)

They’d split up more than an hour ago. It’s not like they’d really had a better option. The routine hunt had gone sideways the second Sam had opened his big mouth and called it a routine hunt. It’s like they were cursed from the minute they’d left the bunker three days ago.

“Fucking witches,” Dean growled to himself under his breath as he swung his flashlight around the ramshackle one room cabin this particular witch had been holing up in when she wasn’t living in her ritzy townhouse downtown.

Smart witches kept their disgusting rituals separate from their respectable day-to-day lives, and this was nothing if not a smart witch. She kept a successful plastic surgery practice going, after all, with her patients none the wiser that most of her beauty treatments were provided courtesy of dark magic rather than medical skill. That’s witches for you; beauty on the outside, but rotten to the core underneath.

Dean had already tossed the townhouse, and the only useful thing he’d found was the map that had led him to her secret hideaway in the woods. He took a moment to cringe at how someone used to living in that classy place could stand to set foot into this squalid dump.

“Fucking _witches_.”

The single cramped room was stacked with books, papers, clothing, and _ugh_. Dean didn’t want to know if some of the stuff he’d found in the mess was supposed to be spell ingredients or ancient dinner leftovers. As far as he was concerned, the entire place qualified as a biohazard.

“Fuck this,” he said, kicking a pile of what he hoped was moldy laundry off a grimy mattress in the corner of the room. A rat and a small army of bugs fled as Dean dismantled their current home. “Five more minutes and I’m just gonna salt and burn the whole place.”

Dean shuddered in disgust and reached down to flip over the dingy mattress. He was spared from having to touch it just yet when his phone rang. One glance down to see it was Sam calling to pester him again, and his momentary reprieve was shattered. He rolled his eyes even though there wasn’t anyone there to see him and answered the call, letting all his frustration and disgust pour down the line.

“What is it now? I told you I’d call as soon as I fucking found it. You know this place is a shithole, right? It’s not like she kept the damned thing under glass with a neon sign announcing _this is my grimoire_ hovering over it, right?”

“Oh, um…” a gruff and gravelly voice replied.

Dean felt like kicking himself, because that was not Sammy he’d just torn into. Sam would’ve called him a dick, stated his business, and everything would’ve been fine. This was definitely not going to be fine.

It was bad enough they’d had to split up in the first place, but Dean really hated the fact that he’d had to let Sam and Cas hunt down the witch themselves while he’d been relegated to trash duty. It was his own damn fault, too. He’d been the one to interview her, and given her just enough information to clue her in to the fact that he was a hunter. She’d walked right out the front door of the hospital where she’d been working her evil magic, hopped into her sporty little convertible, and sped off before Dean could even make it back to the Impala. But none of that had been Cas’s fault.

“Shit, Cas,” Dean said, and then sighed, using the moment to disengage from his further trashing of the already trashed cabin. “I thought you were Sam. What’s up?”

Cas was silent for another moment, and Dean could hear him swallow before he spoke again. “Sam handed me his phone and asked me to call you. He wants to keep the line open.”

“Yeah,” Dean conceded, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s probably a good idea.”

He held the phone to his ear as he continued his search, toeing at the mattress with his boot before resigning himself to actually touching the thing with his hand to get a peek beneath it. _Ugh, mistake_. More bugs, some old parchments, and what appeared to be a bloodstained beach towel. No grimoire.

“I take it you’re not having any luck yet?” Cas finally asked.

“Not yet,” Dean replied, moving over toward a locked chest beside the bed. He attempted to lift the lid, then kicked at the lock a few times. Steel toed boots were not sturdy enough to break it open, so he pulled out his gun and shot the lock off. Not like anyone was around for miles to hear it.

“Dean! Dean, what’s going on? Was that a gunshot?”

Well, Cas was around to hear it, even if he was a hundred miles away. Somehow that made Dean feel both better and worse about everything. Just hearing his voice seemed to help in ways that Dean tried not to think about under normal circumstances; and he _definitely_ didn’t want to think about them under _these_ circumstances. He shuddered and pushed those thoughts away, which really only left him with his anger, borne of fear and worry for Cas and Sam. Well, that and the abject revulsion at his surroundings.

“Yeah,” Dean said, grunting as he lifted the heavy lid of the chest. “Lock picking 101. When you’re in a hurry, sometimes a bullet will do the trick.”

Cas sighed into his ear.

“You guys still got eyes on her?”

“She’s returned home. Sam went around the side of the building to make sure she doesn’t sneak out the back. I’m waiting in the truck in case she attempts to leave again.”

“Huh, so what are you doing with Sam’s phone?” Dean was just trying to distract himself from the task at hand, which was currently sticking said hand down inside that trunk and pulling out an array of old bones, books, and ritual weapons.

“My battery died,” Cas complained. “Sam has his other phone with him if you’d prefer to take out your frustrations on him.”

Dean laughed, but there was no humor in it. He knew as soon as he found and burned the witch’s grimoire, breaking her link to the source of her power, that Sam and Cas would bust through her door and take her out. Which was yet one more reason he was feeling less than charitable.

Okay, fine. He was pissed. He had to let Sam and Cas take her on without him. He wouldn’t be on the spot to take the hit for either of them. Yeah, the cabin was probably the most disgusting place he’d been in years, but he’d rather both Sam and Cas had to dig through this pile of garbage while he’d been the one to put himself in harm’s way. Well, other than the risk of tetanus or whatever the hell else was lurking in that mess.

He finally laid his hand on a book with a huge brass clasp holding it shut. He knocked all the random detritus off a small workbench and set the book down with a thump.

“Did you find it, Dean?” Cas asked.

“Hold on, I think so,” Dean replied, prying the book open and paging through it. “Yeah, I think this is it. All handwritten, spells in at least four different languages. Give me two minutes to burn it and then you and Sammy are a go. Unless…” Dean hesitated.

He pulled out the bottle of lighter fluid and a vial of salt from his pocket and prepared to douse the book on autopilot. He’d done this so many times over the years he didn’t even need to think about it, which was a good thing because his brain was completely preoccupied with other matters.

“Unless what, Dean?”

“Unless you wanna wait for me to drive back to town before the two of you try storming the castle,” Dean answered, hoping he didn’t sound as pathetic about that as he felt.

“It would take close to two hours for you to get back here,” Cas said, his tone terse. “We don’t need to wait. Sam and I can handle this without you.”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, feeling both hurt and a little useless. Sure, he’d been a dick first, but he’d apologized. Sort of. Fuck. Maybe he did deserve it. He set the book down in the dusty fireplace hearth, covered it with salt, soaked the pages with lighter fluid, struck a match and tossed it in. “Well, fine. You and Sammy have a nice time roasting the hag. Her spellbook’s burning to ash as we speak. I’ll see you back at the bunker, since you don’t need my help anymore.”

With that, Dean hung up on Cas. He was already nearly a hundred miles closer to home than they were. It didn’t make any sense for him to drive all the way back to Sioux City when Sam and Cas really didn’t need his help at all. He’d already taken care of the most dangerous-- or at least the most repulsive-- part of the hunt himself.

Dean glared at his phone for another moment, half expecting for Cas to try to call him back, or at least send him a text, before finally jamming it into his pocket. He and Sam had probably already kicked down the witch’s door. It wasn’t like he could be any help with that. They’d be long done by the time he could make it back there.

Instead, he watched her book of evil spells go up in flames. While he was at it, and had a nice roaring blaze going, he started chucking in her other books, charms, and hex bags for good measure. The place could use some tidying up, and short of torching the entire cabin and risking burning down the surrounding forest along with it, this was the next best thing he could do.

He’d worked his way through everything that seemed like it could be potentially dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands when suddenly the entire room lit up with a flash of sickly green light. The next thing Dean knew, he was lying on his back on the filthy floor, blinking spots out of his vision and staring up at the rafters.

That definitely wasn’t normal.

He carefully got to his feet, doing his best not to touch anything else, and looked around for the source of whatever the hell had knocked him on his ass. He had his knife in hand, ready to fight off invisible enemies, but as far as he could tell he was still alone in the cabin. The fire still blazed in the hearth, nearly reduced to embers now. And then his phone rang.

“Dean. We got her,” Sam said. “Everything’s fine. We’re gonna clean up here and then head home.”

Dean spun around in the center of the room, still on high alert, and didn’t reply right away.

“Dean? Hey, did you hear me?” Sam repeated.

“Uh, yeah. Ding dong the witch is dead.”

“Are you okay? Did something happen out there? You sound weird.”

“No. Yeah. I don’t know. I think some of the shit I was burning here was past its expiration date. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Sam replied skeptically. “We’re gonna head for home as soon as we’re done here.”

Dean nodded, and then remembered Sam couldn’t see him through the phone. He found himself wondering just how hard he’d hit his head. It was a little worrisome, but Dean shoved that down and grunted back at his brother. “Whatever. I’m just waiting for the fire to burn down and then I’m going straight for the shower room at home. For a week.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, sure, Dean. See you in a few. If you’re done decontaminating before we get there, maybe you can pick up dinner. We should be back by seven at the latest.”

Dean hung up again. He knew he was still being a dick, but hey. At least they’d taken out the witch without any casualties, and purged the planet of a fairly extensive collection of dark magic. Just because he’d been stuck with the grossest part of the job didn’t mean Sam and Cas deserved to pay the price for it. Especially Cas. It wasn’t his fault that just the sound of his voice and the intense blue-eyed stare was making it harder and harder for Dean to ignore a boatload of inconvenient feelings for the guy.

He promised himself he’d apologize properly as soon as they got home. He’d need a few hours to cool down and wash the stink of witchcraft off his skin first. Until then he felt justified letting himself wallow in his own misery, just a little bit.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time he’d reached Hastings, Dean had had several hours to cool down. He still felt gross, and he could still smell the putrid ashes clinging to him, but he’d put enough distance between that cabin and himself that at least his appetite was starting to return. With a sigh, he pulled off into the parking lot of the biggest grocery store in town and grabbed his phone.

There was a fifty-fifty chance that Mary had already made it back to the bunker. She’d been off for the last week on her latest venture out into the world, helping Jody teach Claire the joys of a good old fashioned salt and burn up in North Dakota. It was only polite to ask if there was anything she needed, so Dean sent her a quick message to let her know he was on his way home. Rather than the usual text reply, his phone rang.

“Hey, mom.”

“Hi, honey. I think I’m probably about an hour behind you boys.  I’m trying to make it back by dinner time. I wouldn’t want to miss out on any of your home cooking.”

Dean couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s cooking tonight.”

“Your hunt not go as planned?” she asked.

“No, no. We took care of it. It took a little more legwork than we were expecting. Sam and Cas are still a couple hours behind me. Long story.” Dean got out of the car and headed into the market. “I’m picking up the essentials, but if you wanna swing by the pizza place on your way back, I think we’d all be grateful.”

“Sure, Dean. Sounds good to me.”

Dean could practically hear the smile in her voice, and it made him feel even better. “Yeah, yeah. You need anything besides the usual?”

“I think I’m good. I’ll see you in a few hours. Love you, Dean.”

“Yeah, you too.”

He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the words even if they were true. Mary didn’t seem to mind, at any rate. Dean stuffed it all down and pushed a shopping basket into the store to stock up on everything that had probably spoiled while they’d all been away for half of the last week, and a few things they’d been running low on before they’d left. Milk, bread, beer. All the staples. Twenty minutes later he was back on the road, driving the final stretch home.

Dean put the groceries away and then went directly to his room to peel out of his filthy clothes. He sorted the rest of the dirty laundry in his duffel bag before grabbing a clean pair of boxers and his robe and making a naked dash for the shower room. There wasn’t anyone else around to see him anyway, and there was no way in hell he was putting anything clean on over his dirty skin. It was nothing that a solid hour of steaming himself clean under the pounding water pressure of his favorite shower couldn’t cure. By the time Dean finally emerged, refreshed and clad in the protective comfort of his robe, he heard Mary coming down the front stairs.

Which meant he was just in time to grab a beer and a few slices of pizza.

“Hey, mom,” he said, greeting her at the doorway to the kitchen and unburdening her of three large pizza boxes. “Sam and Cas aren’t back yet. I’ll take these off your hands and stick them in the oven to keep warm.”

Mary eyed him skeptically. “You sure you’re not trying to make a run for it with all those pizzas?”

Dean scoffed, but then grinned at his mother. “You got me there. I’ll get us a couplea beers and some plates. You go take care of your stuff.” He nodded at the heavy bag slung over her shoulder. “Get comfy, and I’ll have dinner ready in five.”

Mary reached up and patted his cheek. “Such a good boy.” She wandered down the hall toward her room, laughing as she went.

Dean turned the oven on to warm and examined each of the three pizzas. He picked out one with bacon and sausage and set the other two in the oven before heading over to the table with a couple of plates. With the table set, he pulled a beer out of the fridge, twisted the cap off and raised it to his lips. Instead of enjoying a refreshing pull of beer he suddenly found himself sitting on the edge of a bed, bent over unlacing a pair of boots. Even more shocking than that, blonde curls hung down along either side of his face.

“What the fuck?” he said, and then clamped a hand over his mouth, because  _ that was his mother’s voice. _

Dean looked down at his hand, and then around the room. It was Mary’s hand, and Mary’s room. He was about to double-check in the mirror when he heard a bottle smash somewhere in the distance and his own panicked voice echoing down the hallways from the kitchen. He finished pulling off his unlaced boot and then bolted for the kitchen. If he was in Mary’s body, than that must mean…

Dean skidded into the kitchen in his socked feet and gaped at himself standing by the open fridge, right where he’d left himself. His own face gaped back at him.

“Dean?” his body said from across the room.

“Yeah, mom.”

He watched himself-- or Mary-- nod slowly.

“I, uh, I know I haven’t been back very long, but… this sort of thing isn’t normal, is it?” Mary asked, glancing down at herself and picking at the collar of Dean’s robe before looking back at him-- or herself, but still him-- with a hint of true fear in her eyes.

Dean took a few cautious steps toward the rack where he kept the broom and dustpan hanging up and began sweeping the puddle of spilled beer and shards of glass out of the way.

“This is absolutely not normal, mom,” he said as he worked. “I’m gonna need a mop. Hang on. Don’t move.” He pointed down at her bare feet in warning and gave her a stern look before carefully picking his way across the floor in his sock-clad feet to grab a mop and bucket.

“So, if this isn’t  _ normal _ , then what the hell happened? Why am I… you?”

Dean snorted and wrung out the mop. “Fuck. It was probably the goddamned witch.”

Dean got the broken bottle cleaned up, grabbed two fresh beers from the fridge, and then explained their entire hunt gone wrong to his mother over a couple of slices of pizza.

“So you think her death activated some sort of spell linked to her cabin?”

Dean shrugged and set down his third slice of pizza. He’d only taken two bites of it, and already he felt disgustingly full. Mary, in his body, was casually starting on her fourth and not for the first time Dean lamented the fact that he wasn’t in his own body. He sighed and glared down at all that bacon he just couldn’t eat.

“It would explain the weird flash of light. But it doesn’t explain why nothing happened sooner. I mean, I spent twenty minutes at the grocery store. Thank fuck I didn’t trade bodies with some random bag boy.”

“Maybe the spell needed something bigger to trigger itself than a few seconds of contact,” Mary speculated, draining her second beer and studying the bottle before transferring her study to Dean.

He squirmed under the scrutiny, wishing he could have another beer just to have something to do with his hands, but he already felt full to bursting on top of the fact that the two beers he’d already drunk had gone straight to his head. He shrugged and nodded, conceding the point.

“I didn’t stop long enough to talk to anyone, and I went through the self-check lane.”

Mary nodded and stood up slowly before heading to the fridge to grab another beer. She held one up in offer to Dean, but he declined.

“You’re probably right,” she agreed, frowning at the bottle in her hands, but she hesitated opening it. “It must’ve needed some sort of connection to activate it. Familiarity. Physical contact. Maybe even just a conversation.”

“You might wanna reconsider drinking much more, mom. At least until we figure out how to get us switched back. I’d kinda appreciate not getting returned to my body just in time to enjoy a hangover I didn’t even earn.”

Dean’s comment seemed to surprise her, and she blinked up at him, her mouth opening and closing a few times before she bit her lip and turned back to the fridge to return the unopened bottle.

“I guess I didn’t realize how much I was drinking. I don’t even feel it in this body.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, well, trust me. I’m feeling it in this one.”

Mary walked over, studying Dean carefully as she returned to her seat. “So I assume four slices of pizza isn’t an unreasonable amount of food for you?”

“You’ve seen me eat, mom.”

She nodded and then looked over at the empty bottles beside her plate. “I won’t even ask about what an unreasonable amount of beer might be for you. I think I’d prefer not to know.”

“That’s probably a safe assumption,” Dean replied. “Not to mention, I’m hoping this… whatever this is gets reversed before one of us has to answer the call of nature. There’s just some things I really don’t think I need to know about my mother, you know?”

Mary laughed outright at that, but then sobered, crossing her arms over her stomach… or Dean’s stomach… and hunching in on herself a little bit. “Yeah. You have a point there.”

They didn’t have to sit there for more than a minute, fretting over the inevitability of something deeply uncomfortable happening to either of them, before the world went a little fuzzy and Dean found himself sitting on the opposite side of the table staring back at his mother’s face. They blinked at each other for a second before glancing down at themselves, restored without explanation or reason to their own bodies.

“So that happened,” Dean said, stifling an unsettled little laugh.

“You think we’re in the clear now?”

Dean wanted to believe it, but he also knew he’d never been that lucky before. “Honestly? Probably not.”

Mary nodded, checking her watch. “Well, if it happens again, it only seems to last about half an hour.”

Dean laughed. “Yeah, so if I gotta take a whiz I’ll just hold it.”

“I think I’m gonna go take care of a few things while I’ve got a chance…” Mary said absently.

“Yeah, I’ll clean up in here.”

Mary dashed off to her room while Dean leaned across the table and gratefully snatched up the slice of pizza he’d had to abandon earlier. It might’ve been his imagination, but it even tasted better in his own body.  He cleared away their dirty plates and bottles and stashed the leftover pizza in the oven with the others. Sam and Cas would be back soon, and they’d probably just mess the whole kitchen up again anyway.

And shit, what the hell were he and Mary gonna tell them about their weird body swap adventure? He hadn’t exactly gone into that kind of personal detail when he’d explained the case to Mary, but considering how he’d left things the last time he’d talked to Cas, he wasn’t even sure he was up to hanging around long enough to swap weird “ _ how was your day _ ” tales with his brother and the angel. The two of them seemed to be getting along fine without his help anyway.

His adventure with Mary had been distraction enough for a while, but now he couldn’t help thinking about everything all over again. Dean had already been relegated to garbage duty once today, and he wasn’t eager to repeat the experience by digging through the trash heap of his own emotions on top of it all. It would be easier to just write off the entire day as a loss and call it an early night, hoping everything would somehow be better in the morning.

Dean glanced over at the fridge considering whether or not to have another beer. Mary hadn’t abused his body too much. He was only just beginning to feel a little relaxed, with a pleasantly full stomach and a slight buzz. Considering the uncertainty that still hung over them about whatever that spell had done, or might still be doing to them, he decided he could wait a half an hour or so just to be sure they weren’t in for another switcheroo.

He headed off to the bathroom, just in case.

He’d intended to go straight to his room afterward, but he’d heard Mary, Sam, and Cas in the kitchen. As much as he’d wanted to pretend that entire hunt had never happened, it probably wouldn’t be fair to Sam or Cas, or to Mary, to hide away in his room. He’d sleep easier, too, after confirming with his own two eyes that Sam and Cas were both whole and uninjured.

That also, unfortunately, meant that he’d need to see Sam and Cas with his own two eyes. He’d already talked with Sam once since his disastrous phone call to Cas, and he hadn’t seemed upset with Dean over the phone, but he’d left things in a pretty shitty state with Cas. Cas had essentially dismissed him, and then Dean hung up on him. He’d had time to let most of his anger go, but the underlying reasons he’d been angry in the first place hadn’t exactly been dealt with, since shoving feelings down into the deepest, darkest corner of his soul doesn’t count as  _ dealing with them _ . Dean entertained a brief fantasy of punching Dr. Phil right in his smug face, and that helped a little.

If Mary could pull herself together enough to make small talk, then Dean could too. Probably. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut before taking a deep breath and marching off toward the kitchen.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean walked in on Cas and Sam sitting down to dinner. Well, Sam was scarfing down some vegetable covered abomination of a pizza. Who the fuck puts broccoli on pizza anyway? Cas was in the process of explaining how they’d killed the witch to Mary. All three of them looked up at Dean from the table.

“Hey, guys. Don’t let me interrupt you,” he said to Cas, who took him at his word and kept right on talking.

He tried not to take it as another personal dismissal and headed over to the fridge to grab another beer. Mary cleared her throat loudly, and Dean turned to see her pointing significantly at the clock by the doorway. It had only been about twenty minutes since they’d been back in their proper bodies. Fine, whatever, he could wait ten more damn minutes to have a drink. He rolled his eyes, kicked the fridge door shut and stalked over to the table in a huff. From the pinched expression of concern that Cas observed him with the entire way across the kitchen, Mary hadn’t gotten around to explaining their little problem yet. Wonderful.

Cas finished up his clinical description of their post-hunt cleanup with a concerned glance between Mary and Dean, who’d been debating with one another across the table with hand gestures and facial expressions. It was Sam who finally put down his pizza long enough to ask what their weird silent conversation was about.

Dean sighed in defeat as Mary overruled him and spoke up.

“You should know, just in case it happens again, but Dean and I had a strange evening here. We spent about half an hour…” She waved a hand between herself and Dean and frowned, not having a rational-sounding explanation for what had happened.

Dean took it upon himself to explain instead. “We swapped bodies, like that time those kids tried to trade you to their pet demon and I spent a whole day with some even geekier kid walking around in your skin.”

Sam’s eyes went wide at the memory of his regrettable day as Gary the nerdy warlock with a gluten allergy. “Yeah, no, I get it. Um. So. How did this happen?”

Dean shrugged, but Sam figured it out on his own. “At the cabin, you said you thought something you were burning might’ve affected you. You think you accidentally cursed yourself?”

“I don’t think so. I salted everything and threw it in the fire. A few minutes before you called, there was a flash of green light that knocked me on my ass.”

“How long?” Cas asked, suddenly intent on Dean again.

“How long was I on my ass?” Dean asked, squirming under Cas’s gaze. It was bad enough to have failed at his job in the first place, and then to have failed Sam and Cas again at the cabin. He didn’t need the implication Cas seemed to be making that whatever curse he’d been hit with was his own damn fault, on top of everything else.

“How long before Sam called did you experience this green light knocking you on your ass?”

Mary snorted at Cas repeating Dean’s eloquent turn of phrase so sincerely, and Dean glared at her before answering Cas.

“I don’t know. I saw the light, and next thing I know I’m lying on the floor. Then the phone rang. Maybe a minute? Two, tops?”

Cas nodded and narrowed his eyes, but it was Sam who voiced the frustrated question Dean hadn’t had a chance to ask yet.

“Wait, you think killing the witch activated some sort of failsafe spell back at her cabin?”

Cas tilted his head back and forth considering it. “It’s certainly a possibility. Rowena used a similar spell to resurrect herself after Lucifer snapped her neck, but this witch didn’t have the kind of power necessary to resurrect herself from one of your witch killing bullets, nor did she have access to  the spells Rowena used from the Book of the Damned. It’s possible that the strongest spell she could link to her own death would involve a petty revenge against her killer. A temporary body swap spell is complex magic, but I believe she could’ve arranged it.”

“Fucking great,” Dean said. He still hadn’t had a chance to apologize to Cas for being a dick before, and now he’d brought up Rowena and the damned Book of the Damned-- two topics of conversation that were sure to trigger the worst of Dean’s dick tendencies. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed one hand over his face. “You think it was a one and done then?”

Cas studied Dean from head to toe and then shrugged. “It’s impossible to tell.”

Mary glanced up at the clock and then hesitantly cut in. “We’ve been back in our own bodies for about twenty five minutes. Since we were… swapped out?” She glanced around at each of them. Sam shrugged and Dean nodded acceptance at her description. “For about half an hour, we were sort of hoping that if nothing happened within a half hour or so that we’d be in the clear.”

“You were hoping,” Dean corrected her. “I’m not that hopeful. This whole day’s gone to hell for me. I don’t think I’m that lucky.”

Cas glared at him. “It doesn’t hurt to keep a positive attitude, Dean. You might consider trying it sometime.”

Dean was about to snap back with something entirely inappropriate, fueled by the cesspool of churning emotions he’d been bottling up all day. He gritted his teeth together and held his tongue, because he was just too tired to deal with any of it.

“Whatever you say, sunshine. I’m gonna hit the hay.” He got up without another word to anyone and stormed out of the kitchen.

Annoyingly enough, he’d only made it halfway to his room before he found himself sitting back at the kitchen table staring at the empty kitchen doorway. Well, fuck.

Across the table from him, Sam turned to glance up at the clock again before turning a strange little half-frown on Dean. “So, we only got 25 minutes between switches this time. Does that help you narrow down what’s causing this?”

“How the fuck should I know, Sammy,” Dean replied, and then flinched when Castiel’s voice poured out his mouth. One glance down at himself confirmed what he’d already suspected. Trenchcoat, stupid striped tie. Dammit.

Sam’s eyes went wide in shock, both at Dean's outburst and Dean’s look of disgust on Cas’s features, and he bit his lip to hold in a laugh. “I’m guessing you’re Dean, then, and not Castiel.”

Mary, sitting stiffly in her chair, spoke up then. “No, I’m Castiel.”

Dean slowly turned to his mother-- or at least toward her body-- with a look of abject horror on his face as he put it all together. Mary was apparently riding around wearing Sam, but Cas was hitching a ride inside his mother. He shuddered, because that was at least nine kinds of wrong. It didn’t do anything for all those unaddressed feelings he’d been refusing to deal with. He could definitely put off dealing with them for at least another half an hour.

Dean once again heard himself scream from another room as Sam came running back into the kitchen wearing Dean’s body.

“Okay, we gotta find a way to fix this,” Sam said, glancing around at the rest of them and then frowning. “Who’s who?”

Mary raised her hand-- or Sam’s hand-- and said, “Mom,” Cas raised Mary’s hand and said, “Castiel.” Dean just sat there in Cas’s body glaring at Sam and said, “Bitch.”

Sam replied, “Jerk.”

Dean shook his head. “That just sounds so wrong comin’ outta my mouth.”

“All of this sounds wrong,” Sam agreed, still standing in the doorway. “I’ll be in the library looking for an antidote to this… whatever this is.”

Cas pushed back from the table. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

“Great, now Sam’s gonna use my body for research. Aren’t there laws against this sorta shit?” Dean grumbled.

“I’m coming too,” Mary said, stumbling a little as she raised Sam’s huge frame from her chair. “Oh my god, he’s tall.” She ducked a little, unnecessarily, as she approached the doorway and carefully made her way out into the hall.

Dean snorted. “Yeah, good luck gettin’ used to that high center of gravity.”

Mary leaned back through the doorway and smirked at him, but then followed after Sam. That left Dean and Cas alone in the kitchen.

“You’re awfully calm about this,” Dean said.

Cas shrugged. “I may only have ever occupied a handful of vessels, but I believe it’s something inherent in my nature. This isn’t all that much different from taking on a new vessel. It’s disconcerting, but it’s not as traumatic for me as it must be for you, or for Sam and Mary.”

Once again, Dean didn’t really appreciate the reminder that Cas wasn’t actually human, though in this case it helped push down those feelings again. It didn’t make it easier to deal with them, but at least it got him out of his own head long enough to remember why he’d never burdened Cas with his stupid human desires. Cas probably wasn’t even human enough to appreciate them, let alone reciprocate. This was just another bit of proof. So why did that just make everything worse?

Cas slowly sat back down, carefully studying a clearly sulking Dean. When Dean finally glanced up and noticed, he glared back.

“What, you gonna ask me about my feelings now?”

Cas’s eyes widened at Dean’s harsh tone that only sounded angrier in Cas’s deep, gravelly voice. He looked down at his hands fidgeting in his lap before replying quietly. “Uh, no. I’m just… I think I might not be dealing with this as well as I thought I was. I’m finding it unsettling to look at you wearing my face, and speaking in my voice. I know you’re _you_ , inside, but… you’re _me_. I wasn’t expecting it to feel like this.”

His words shocked Dean. Every ugly thought he’d had in the last few minutes dissolved, but he still fought to make sense of Cas’s confession. It was an impossibly bizarre situation in which to have this conversation, but then again, it might never have happened at all otherwise.

“So, what, you’re more attached to this body than you thought you were?” Dean asked carefully.

Cas reached out a hand like he was considering touching Dean’s face-- or technically his _own_ face-- before dropping it back to his lap. “I believe so, yes. It’s been mine for a long time now.”

“Yeah, but it’s probably a blink of an eye to you.”

Cas shook his head. “No, it really doesn’t feel that way. Especially not since I lost my grace. Even now that it’s been partially restored, I seem to have retained a more human perception of the passage of time. It lends a certain urgency to the desire to remedy this situation.”

Dean nodded along, suddenly feeling like ten times the dick he’d been acting toward Cas. Maybe Cas wasn’t pissed off at him for fucking everything up on their hunt. Maybe Cas hadn't been dismissing Dean’s ability to help them finish off the witch. Maybe he just felt that very human _urgency_ about finishing the job.

He might think of Cas as just another person most of the time, but Dean never completely let himself forget that Cas was still not human. As he sat there watching Cas watch him, he wondered if maybe he should let himself forget it. In pretty much every way that counted, Cas was just as human as he was. And right now, wearing his mother’s face, Cas looked worried.

Dean huffed out a little laugh and felt his eyes burn and prickle at the revelation. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you,” he said, smoothing down Cas’s tie.

Cas beamed at him and nodded. “I trust you, Dean.”

Dean swallowed hard. That was as good a time as any to set a few things straight. “I’m sorry, Cas.”

Cas tilted his head, puzzled, which looked entirely wrong on Mary’s features. “For what?”

“For fucking up the case. For letting the witch get away. For biting your head off on the phone. For fucking up _again_ and getting us all cursed into this mess. For being angry that I couldn’t help you and Sam take her down. But mainly for thinking you were pissed off at me; that you didn’t even want my help.”

“Oh, Dean,” Cas replied, reaching out to lay his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “You didn’t fuck up anything.”

Dean raised an eyebrow at the swear, but Cas kept right on going.

“This isn’t your fault. One of us would’ve had to destroy the book, and it could just as easily have been me, or even Sam. One of us would’ve been at that cabin when the spell was triggered. You are not to blame for this. If anything, I’m to blame.”

“Cas, no,” Dean started, but he didn’t get to finish his thought because suddenly he was standing beside himself in the library, paging through a musty old book on witchcraft.

“That was just under twenty five minutes that time,” Cas yelled-- or whoever was currently wearing Cas yelled-- as he came running into the library.

“Mom?” Dean guessed, cringing a little bit at hearing Sam’s voice come out of his mouth.

Cas-- no Mary-- nodded, and plucked the book out from between Dean and… whoever was wearing Dean. One look at his own face and he knew it was Cas in there.

“I promise to take good care of you, too,” Cas replied, running a hand down the collar of Dean’s dead guy robe. “This is very comfortable. I can see why you enjoy it.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple spares. You can have one of your own if you want.”

Sam came tripping up the steps into the library, as awkward as Mary had been in his own too tall body. “Shut up,” he said. “Mom’s tiny.”

“I am not,” Mary replied in Castiel’s grumbling voice. “You’re just used to being extra large.”

With Mary and Sam temporarily distracted with research again, Dean pulled Cas out into the hall behind the library. Even weirder than having this conversation with Cas wearing his mother, was having this conversation while Cas was wearing _him_. Dean spent half a second looking down at his own face.

“Huh, no wonder Sammy thinks I’m short.”

“You’re not short, Dean. You’re three and a quarter inches taller than the average American male.”

“I know, right? Sam’s just a yeti.”

Dean and Cas stood there grinning at each other until Cas finally brought him back to why they were standing in the hall in the first place.

“Did you bring me out here for a reason? Because otherwise we should probably be helping Mary and Sam find a solution to our problem.”

“Yeah, Cas. I did.” Dean took a deep breath that felt even deeper than usual with Sam’s freakishly oversized lungs. Maybe jogging was good for you. Dean shook his head to clear the thought away and remind himself of where they’d left off back in the kitchen. “Yeah, this ain’t your fault, either. I didn’t wanna admit it, and fuck if I wanna admit it now, but you were right. I was just pissed off at my own situation, and it sucks to feel helpless, you know? I wanted to be there.”

“Dean,” Cas replied, looking up at him with all the earnesty he could muster, which looked absolutely surreal on his own face. “You know I would never have let anything happen to Sam, right? You can trust me to take care of him in a fight.”

“Of course I know that, Cas,” Dean said, a little louder than necessary. “I was just as worried about you, you idiot.”

Cas looked taken aback at that. “But I’m an angel, Dean. Most of the things we hunt aren’t likely to  have the power to hurt me.”

“And? That’s not gonna stop me from worrying.” Dean played back Cas’s assertion, and then glared at him. “She didn’t have the power to hurt you, but she still had the power to fuck with you. You telling me you can’t just work some of that mojo and fix this?”

Cas grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I, uh, don’t seem to have access to it at the moment.”

“What, it didn’t transfer along with the body swap?”

“I don’t know, Dean. Right now I seem to be as human as you are.”

For some strange reason, this made Dean smile, but it didn’t last long.

“I gotta right to worry about you, Cas. You know you’re just as important to me as Sam is. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you I need you, that you’re family, before it sinks in.”

It was incredibly weird seeing Cas’s usual facial expressions-- the tiny smile, the shine in his eyes, just a general sort of _Cas-ness_ that Dean suddenly realized he’d recognize anywhere-- spread across his own features. The same way he’d always been able to tell the difference between Cas and Jimmy now proved, by the distinctly Cas-inspired feelings running through him right then, that he’d feel the same way about Cas no matter whose meatsuit he happened to be wearing.

In a fit of uncontrolled emotion as one of those traitorous feelings escaped the tightly sealed box Dean always tried to keep them packed away in, he reached out and laid a hand on Cas’s shoulder. Or his shoulder, he remembered too late when Sam’s giant mitt moved into his field of vision. And dammit, the Interrupting Moose was working his magic even now.

Dean cleared his throat-- _Sam’s throat! It’s Sam’s throat!_ \-- and let his hand drop away. Cas’s smile fell with it.

“I think we should continue this discussion after we’ve resolved our current predicament,” Cas said, looking down at his bare feet-- or Dean’s bare feet-- before looking back up at Dean and… blushing slightly? Dean could hardly believe his eyes. “Would you mind if I borrowed a pair of socks, or possibly slippers? The floor is surprisingly chilly.”

With that, Dean could hardly believe his ears, either. “Yeah, sure. Come on,” he replied, turning to lead Cas back to his room.

He got Cas outfitted with both socks _and_ slippers before offering him a pair of sweatpants as well. He held them out to Cas, who seemed confused by the offer.

“You know,” Dean said, waving the pants around. “If you’re cold, you’re welcome to ‘em. I can guarantee they’ll fit, anyway.”

Cas laughed at that but declined the offer. “Unless I need to lie down on the floor for some reason, I think this will suffice,” he replied, smoothing down the front of Dean’s long, heavy robe.

Dean smiled fondly at the sight and fought to school his face into something more neutral when Cas grinned up at him. It was a losing battle, though, and it only took a second for Dean to cave as another feeling or two escaped confinement and fluttered to the surface.

“We should go help Mom and Sam, or at least head back to the library before we switch again.” Dean added to himself, _so no one finds us awkwardly standing six inches apart at the foot of my bed_...

Cas nodded and followed Dean out. They’d almost made it back to the library when suddenly Dean was _in_ the library. This time it was his own voice again shouting, “Twenty one minutes.”

“The cycles are getting shorter,” Cas-- no _Sam in Cas’s body_ \-- said as his body came running back into the room. Sam stepped around the table and pulled Dean out of the chair where he’d been sitting, poring over a huge hand-written manuscript. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Cas, now occupying Sam’s body, replied, “It could mean that each successive swap will last for a shorter time until the spell simply burns itself out, but I don’t believe there’s any guarantee which body we’ll be stranded in should that happen.”

Cas’s speculation landed like the Hindenburg, and Dean took a moment to exchange horrified, silent glances with his mother and brother before looking back over at Cas.

“No, no no no,” Dean finally said. “We gotta fix this right the fuck now. You said this spell worked something like Rowena’s resurrection spell, right?”

Cas shifted a little, squinting and tilting his head thoughtfully. The mannerism looked so wrong on Sam’s face, but Dean brushed that technicality aside.

“Wait, what? Resurrection spell? And who’s Rowena?” Mary asked.

Sam began explaining to her as calmly and quickly as possible while Cas replied to Dean.

“I said it was based on a similar theory. It’s quite possible that Rowena may be able to offer some insight into a potential resolution.”

Dean stared at him for a moment and then reached down for his pocket out of habit. It only took a second to remember that he wouldn’t find his phone in Mary’s pocket. He turned to her, tapping her arm-- _his own arm_ \-- and interrupting Sam’s apparently enthralling summary of their dealings with the King of Hell and his mother.

“Hey, mom. I just need my phone, if you don’t mind.”

Mary stared at him and gulped, fumbling absently in the large pockets of Dean’s robe before pulling out his phone and handing it over.

“You calling Crowley, then?” Sam asked, sounding even less happy about it than usual while using Cas’s voice.

Dean shook his head, pulling up Crowley’s contact info. “You got a better idea? Or do you wanna get permanently stuck in Cas?”

Sam made a face at that and sighed. “Fine. I’ll power down the wards.”

With that, Mary followed Sam out to the War Room while he continued bringing her up to speed on all things Crowley.

“I don’t like this,” Cas said as Dean dialed the number and set the phone down on the table between them.

“I don’t like it either, Cas, but I gotta be honest here. I’d like it even less if you got stuck wearing Sam for the rest of forever, while I’m stuck wearing my mom. It’s all just a little too Oedipus Rex for me.”

Dean realized what he’d implied as the words escaped his mouth. He gawped at Cas, while Cas stared open-mouthed back at him, blinking. Unfortunately Crowley also heard the last few words and seemed delighted to break the stunned silence that had erupted in the bunker’s library following Dean’s massively Freudian slip.

“My, my, what kind of intriguing conversations have you invited me to this evening, Squirrel? And whom else do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

“It’s me, Crowley,” Dean said, remembering that he was speaking with Mary’s voice. “We have a… situation here.”

“Dean?” Crowley replied. “I’ve always wondered what it would take for you to truly get in touch with your feminine side, but I never thought you’d take it this far.”

“Shut it, Crowley,” Dean replied, and was about to say something antagonistic when Cas cut him off.

“Crowley, we believe your mother may be able to help us find a counter-curse before it’s too late and the effects become permanent.”

“Ah, Moose. You don’t sound much like yourself, either. In fact, you sound more like you’ve swallowed a little bird,” Crowley said. “I assumed Dean had been cursed into a female body, but that’s not it, is it?”

“It’s a body swap curse,” Cas replied. “And it’s escalating.”

Cas explained their theory of the curse, and Crowley agreed to discuss it with Rowena. It was a short conversation, and Dean ended the call after letting Crowley know the wards were down so he could bring an antidote over as soon as possible.

Not two minutes later, Crowley and Rowena appeared in the library, just as Sam and Mary returned. Dean saw his mother flinch, reaching instinctively for a gun he was grateful wasn’t there. It would’ve been bad form to try and shoot the witch they’d asked for help.

Crowley grinned around at all of them, sizing up the extent of their troubles.

“Feathered Moose, girly Squirrel, Sam shortened, and I assume whoever’s wearing Dean is the normal occupant of this lovely lady,” Crowley winked salaciously at Dean in his mother’s body.

“That’s our mother you’re talking about,” Dean barked.

Crowley’s eyes went wide while Rowena looked him over consideringly before glancing over at Mary.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Winchester. Your boys have kept me busy and entertained for years now.”

“Stop it, Crowley,” Sam interrupted him. “Can you fix this or not?”

Rowena stepped forward to get a closer look at all of them. “Yes, I believe I might be able to whip up a little something for what ails you. I’ll need a cup of tea first, and ten minutes to mix everything up.”

“We don’t have ten minutes,” Mary said, and then the curse took hold of them once again.


	4. Chapter 4

It was Sam’s turn once more to serve as their official timekeeper, seeing as how Mary had landed in his body again. “Twenty minutes on the dot that time,” Mary said with Sam’s mouth. “The intervals are definitely getting shorter.”

“Well, this is most assuredly going to prove to be inconvenient,” Rowena replied, looking down at herself in mild horror as she took in Dean’s robe, holding out one foot and then the other and making a disgusted face at the wooly socks and bedroom slippers that now graced her feet.

“You’re telling me,” Dean replied, glaring at Rowena with her own eyes.

“Yes, well, mother. I suppose this gives you some extra incentive to clear this up, pronto,” Crowley said, glancing down at himself and then shrugging out of Castiel’s trench coat and flinging it over the nearest chair. “Good god, Castiel. How do you wear that thing?”

“Exactly as I was wearing it before you removed it, Crowley,” Cas said in Crowley’s own voice. He reached up out of habit and loosened Crowley’s tie.

Crowley glared at him. “Be careful. That’s Armani.”

Cas rolled his eyes.

“Whatever,” Dean replied. “You still intent on pouring tea into my body?” he asked Rowena.

She smiled down at him, and fuck did that feel wrong. “Please.”

Dean grunted at her as best he could with Rowena’s vocal cords, and then pointed around the room at everyone else. “Coffee? Tea?”

“If you’re making some,” Crowley replied, “I’ll have a cup. You know how I like it, Dean.”

Dean glared at him, and Cas moved up beside Dean.

“I’ll help with the coffee,” Cas offered, and then he and Dean started for the door.

“Don’t get up to any funny stuff with my body while you’re wearing my mother’s, Squirrel,” Crowley chimed after them. Dean ignored him completely.

“At least he’s finally got the accent right,” Rowena grumbled as they left.

Dean and Cas puttered around the kitchen making coffee and boiling water. It was ridiculous, because neither of them were tall enough to reach the shelf where Dean normally kept the tea. Dean finally gave up and scrambled up on a chair, and ended up kicking off the ridiculously high heels that Rowena had been wearing so he wouldn’t break his neck in the process. Without the shoes, Dean was even tinier. When Cas came over to help him down, Dean looked up at him and laughed.

“I fail to see what’s so funny about this situation, Dean.”

“At least you’re not in Sam right now or I’d get a kink in my neck tryin’ to look at you.”

Okay, Dean decided right there that _nothing_ was freakier than Cas’s little smile on fucking Crowley’s face. He shuddered and was grateful the kettle chose that moment to whistle.

Cas frowned as Dean hurried away to make the tea. “You weren’t nearly this upset by any of the other body swaps,” Cas said after a few moments of staring at Dean’s back-- or Rowena’s back. He stood unmoving a safe distance away, giving Dean plenty of space to wriggle out of the conversation if he wanted to.

Dean choked on something that sounded a little like a laugh and shook his head. “Yeah, well, I kinda got a… complicated history with that particular _visage_.”

Dean still wasn’t looking at him, and Cas looked down at his feet, at the shiny toes of Crowley’s boots. Dean and Crowley both had told him a little something about that complicated history. “I’m sorry, Dean.”

“For what?” Dean finally turned away from the tea and looked up at him.

Cas shrugged. “For not fighting harder for you when Sam was possessed by Gadreel, and after when you ran away and took on the Mark. For leaving your side in Purgatory. For not trying to get out with you. For breaking heaven. For not listening to you when you begged me not to take the souls from Purgatory in the first place. I’m sorry for everything.”

Dean shook his head and crossed the room to stand in front of Cas, pointing one finger up at his face. “No. You better not be sorry for everything. You pulled me outta Hell and put me back together, and you…” He swallowed hard, because he never thought he’d say these words out loud, and he _really_ never thought he’d be saying them to Crowley’s face… but suddenly, he wasn’t saying them to anyone.

“Goddammit!” Rowena’s voice shouted from the kitchen, mingled with Crowley’s growling, “How am I expected to work under these intolerable conditions?”

“Only fifteen minutes this time,” Mary said, marking the time yet again; and confirming that she was back in Cas’s body.

One shake of his head with attendant swishing of his hair confirmed to Dean that he was back in Sam, as Crowley--no, Rowena in Crowley-- stormed back into the room and shoved Crowley-- now wearing Dean-- out of her chair.

“Move it, Fergus. This spell is not only time sensitive, but also quite delicate. I’d appreciate it everyone could _back off_. I have no intention of becoming permanently trapped inside my son’s second-hand meatsuit.”

Sam finally arrived back in the library wearing Rowena, just in time for the witch to kick him back out again.

“And someone bring me my tea, for heaven’s sake!” Rowena shouted after them all.

Dean looked around at the other faces, struggling to remember who was supposed to be who. One glance at his mother’s face let him know that she was Cas again, or Cas was in her again, or... Whatever. He gave Cas’s current elbow a little tug and dragged him back to the kitchen to fetch Rowena’s tea.

They were quiet for a moment while Dean took full advantage of being in Sam’s taller body to put the tea back where it belonged and pull down the jar of honey for Crowley. He set everything on a tray and then rested his hands on the counter, head bowed, before turning to face Cas, who he could feel standing just behind him. He wasn’t sure how long they’d have this time before they were flung back into the mix, and he really needed to say it. At least it felt easier to say it to his mother’s face than to fucking Crowley’s.

“Cas, you put me back together after Hell, and sometimes… sometimes it feels like you’ve been holding me together ever since.” Dean studied him as Cas nodded slowly but didn’t interrupt. “Even when we’ve both fucked things up, we’ve always put things back together again, you know? It might not be perfect, but it’s good enough. We’re both still here. All the rest of it’s water under the bridge, capisce? You and me, we’re square. You got nothin’ to apologize for. I just want you to maybe stick around this time. I need you. Not because you’re handy to have around once in a while, but just… to keep holding me together.”

“I think I can do that,” Cas replied quietly. “You should know, you do the same for me. When I doubted my mission, doubted everything, you were the example I learned from. You showed me how to choose my own destiny, and then helped me live with the consequences of my choices. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

“Shit, Cas,” Dean interrupted him, hanging his head and squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry for that. I know you used to belong to a much better club, or whatever.”

Dean missed the curious little head tilt at that, but he didn’t miss Cas’s reply.

“You mean heaven?” Cas snorted. “If you think that’s a better club than humanity you’ve been sadly misinformed.”

Dean blinked up at Cas to see him smirking. “But you… what?”

“Dean, I’ve told you before, years ago now, that I’d rather be here with you. I’ve never wanted to be a burden on you, so I try to stay away when I can.” He reached out and laid his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “But I always would prefer to be here. With you.”

“Then stay. Please.”

Dean didn’t get a reply before the whole world shifted again.

Rowena’s voice rang out from the war room announcing that it had barely been ten minutes between switches that time, and again he knew that had to be Mary. From his new perspective in Crowley’s body, standing in front of Rowena’s half-finished spell spread out across one of the library tables, Dean had an excellent view of everything unfolding in the War Room, but could also hear everything unfolding in the kitchen.

“Well, if it isn’t the feathered moose again,” Crowley said with Mary’s voice. “This is quite an interesting development.”

“Remove your hand from me, Crowley,” Cas replied with Sam’s voice.

“I wasn’t the one who put it there in the first place. Looks like I was right to be concerned about what you and Dean might get up to with other people’s meatsuits. I had no idea that you two had such an affinity for roleplay.”

That’s all Dean heard before Cas-- no Rowena in Cas’s body-- came storming back into the room. “My tea will have gone cold by now,” she said, shooing Dean away. “And you expect me to work under these conditions.”

Cas returned from the kitchen with the tray of tea and coffee, followed by Crowley already sipping his own cup of tea. He set the tray down on the map table, then brought a cup over to Rowena and set it down a safe distance from her spell ingredients.

“Honey and a splash of milk,” Cas said, glancing over and Dean uneasily. “Crowley assured me that’s how you take it.”

She sighed dramatically, but thanked him and got back to work, dismissing both him and Dean yet again.

Dean hadn’t planned on having any coffee himself, but if he was gonna be stuck in Crowley’s meatsuit, he might as well, since he knew Crowley didn’t care for the stuff. If Crowley was gonna rudely cut in to their private conversation (admittedly through no fault of his own, Dean conceded, but immediately decided to disregard that fact entirely), and then antagonize Cas about it, then Dean could engage in a little petty revenge of his own. He sipped at a cup of black coffee, savoring the bitter warmth with Crowley’s tongue. Crowley simply scowled back at him.

Sam, gratefully, took the opportunity to nip their escalating dramatics in the bud. Everyone else had taken a seat around the map table, and Dean had even kicked Crowley’s feet up to rest on the edge of the table, but Cas was still hovering beside Dean. Sam pulled out the empty chair between him and Dean, and nodded up at Cas wearing his own body.

“You mind having a seat, Cas? It’s kinda freaking me out seeing my own body standing next to Crowley’s looking like some sort of minion.”

“I’m no one’s minion,” Cas replied, but conceded to Sam’s wishes.

Dean laughed and sat up to pour Cas a cup of coffee. “Damn right, sunshine. Have a cup.”

“Sunshine,” Crowley scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“So, Crowley,” Sam said, again trying to derail the petty squabbling. “What’s this spell Rowena’s working up?”

“You’ll have to ask her for the specifics. We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to confer.”

“Fergus, I’m nearly ready,” Rowena called out from the library. “Gather ‘round, everyone. This would’ve been easier if _someone,_ ” she glared at Dean, “hadn’t incinerated the witch’s book of spells. This is the best I could do with nothing but guesswork to go on. It’s time to find out if I’m even capable of working magic in an angel’s vessel.”

She lit a few candles while everyone migrated into the library. As soon as they were in place, she began chanting and tossing ingredients into a bowl, sparks and smoke rising as the ingredients mixed together. At the end of her chant, a bright green light engulfed the room. When the haze cleared, everyone looked around at one another, confused.

“Uh, nothing happened,” Dean said, waving a hand at himself, still in Crowley’s meatsuit.

“No, _something_ happened,” Rowena replied. “It’s not the result I was hoping for, but the spell’s broken.”

“No more switching?” Mary asked, looking over at the clock. “It’s been more than ten minutes now, longer than the last switch. And I’m sorry, Rowena, but I’m not exactly thrilled to be stuck in your body.”

“I’m not entirely thrilled with this outcome, myself,” Rowena confirmed, tugging off Cas’s tie and shrugging out of his suit jacket.

“So what do we do now?” Dean asked, looking from Rowena (he couldn’t stand to watch her stripping off Cas’s clothes anymore), to Crowley (he couldn’t stand to see Crowley wearing his mother anymore), to Cas (at least looking at Sam’s face proved relatively safe, if increasingly weird after the conversation he’d been having with Cas all night).

Everyone seemed to be at a loss, when Crowley finally rolled his eyes again. “Do I have to think of everything?” he said, and then snapped his fingers, ostensibly with the intent of zapping off somewhere or other. When nothing happened, he snapped them again. He glared at his hand-- Mary’s hand-- and then at Dean. “Did you reactivate the wards?”

“No,” Cas replied, finally feeling a little smug. “It’s an effect of the switching spell. My powers are gone, as well.”

“Mine still work,” Rowena chimed in.

“Like that perfect spell you did that trapped us all in these… bodies?” Crowley said.

“Her spell was a ritual, Crowley,” Sam replied in her defense. “It would’ve worked the same for anyone, powers or not.” He turned to Rowena. “Try something else. Something that doesn’t rely on a ritual to cast.”

She raised an eyebrow at Sam, but did as he requested and waved a hand at her tea cup, muttering a few words under her breath. Nothing happened. Just like Crowley had, she repeated the action, but the results were no different.

“It should’ve shattered,” she said, looking terrified and shuffling back from the table. “My magic! It’s gone!”

“Where were you plannin’ to zap off to anyway,” Dean asked Crowley, mostly to give Rowena a chance to recover from her shock.

“I was going to bring in the big guns, as it were,” he replied.

“Big guns?” Mary asked.

“When you need souls moved around, call a reaper,” Crowley said, smirking at her. If he’d been hoping to frighten her with that information, he’d been sorely disappointed.

“Oh, Billie!” Mary replied, brightening a little bit. “You think she can…” Mary waved her hand around at everyone.

Crowley shrugged. “If she’s feeling charitable, it’s within her power to put us all back where we belong.”

“So how’re we supposed to summon her?” Dean asked. “She usually only shows up when someone’s dead, or near enough that it makes no difference.”

“I know your penchant for sacrificing yourself at times like these, Dean, but let’s not be hasty when the body you’d be risking doesn’t rightfully belong to you,” Crowley reminded him.

“It doesn’t rightfully belong to you, either, Crowley,” Cas said.

“Yes, well, that’s a moral quandary for another time, I believe,” Crowley replied.

“Why not discuss it right now,” Billie said, suddenly appearing behind Crowley. “I’d be fascinated to hear your opinions on the matter.”

“Billie,” Sam said. “How… why?”

She grinned at him. “I’ve been watching y’all scramble around all evening. Fascinating stuff. Winchesters. Always up to something.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we asked to be cursed,” Dean replied.

Billie disagreed. “Pretty sure it’s in the job description when you’re hunting witches.”

“Then the job should come with hazard pay,” Sam grumbled.

Billie nearly cracked a smile at that, but then got straight to the point. “This has been fun, and all, but I don’t think I need to tell you how much this disrupts the natural order. Between the witch, the demon, and the angel, there’s a lot of power flying around loose in here. I think it’s in everyone’s best interests to get everything put back where it came from.”

With no further warning, Billie waved her hand and every last one of them crumpled to the floor like limp noodles. She extracted each of their souls and sorted them all back where they belonged. They all remained unconscious, because there was still the matter of power.

Rowena’s magical abilities were the easiest to sort out. They were supernatural, but they were very much human powers. Crowley’s demonic powers came next, as she pulled a plume of red smoke out of thin air and sent it fluttering toward Crowley’s open mouth.

Cas’s grace was another matter entirely. It had stubbornly spread itself thin throughout the bunker, and it took some doing to budge it from where it had practically settled into the woodwork. It was particularly clingy toward Dean’s room and the kitchen, but she eventually managed to collect it all up into a small glass vial. When that was done, she woke Cas but left everyone else asleep for a little bit longer.

He blinked awake and scrambled to his feet, taking in everyone else still lying unconscious on the floor, finally regarding Billie. She held out her hand containing the glowing vial of grace and Cas just studied it for a moment.

“Found this lying around, angel,” she said. “It took some work to pull it free. It seems to feel a little possessive towards Dean, there,” she tilted her head toward Dean’s body on the floor and raised an eyebrow at Cas. “Didn’t want to leave his room. I thought it might be safest to hand this over for you to deal with, rather than try and force it back somewhere it doesn’t want to be.”

Cas glanced nervously from her to the vial, and then back again. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve got a soul, Castiel,” she replied, as if that fact should be obvious to him. “You don’t need this to live. It means you’ve got choices. And this?” she dangled the vial out, offering it to him. “I think this was doing its damndest to try and choose for you.”

“What should I do with it?” he asked, extending a hand so Billie could drop the glowing vial into his outstretched palm.

“Break the glass and drink it in,” she suggested with a shrug, turning toward the stairs. “Let it loose so it can burrow back down into the bones of this place, maybe. It’s entirely up to you.”

“Wouldn’t that _disrupt the natural order_?”

Billie tilted her head to the side as she turned back around to face him from across the room. “Sometimes the natural order needs to be shaken up a little bit, don’t you think? Shows you what’s really important in life.” She cast a significant look down at Dean and then looked back up at Cas. “It’s your life, Castiel. You get to decide what you want to do with it.”

He nodded, staring down at the vial he was turning over and over in his hands. It felt strange, this tiny shard of energy that held as much power as a small sun, yet was the entirety of how he’d defined himself for billions of years. It didn’t look like much from this perspective, a little glowing bottle, smaller than his thumb. _His_ thumb. A human thumb.

Cas took a deep breath and slid the bottle into his pocket. “I think I might hold on to this for a while.”

Billie nodded at him. “That’s probably a wise choice. I think you’re gonna be fine, Castiel.”

With that, she disappeared and the people on the floor began to stir.

Cas glanced over at Sam to make sure he was okay and then knelt down beside Dean as he groggily pushed himself up off the floor.

“Cas? You good?” Dean asked before he’d even managed to sit up all the way. It made Cas’s heart race and his skin feel prickly that Dean’s first concern had been for him.

“I’m fine, Dean. How do you feel?”

“Like I had one too many tequila shots and woke up in a dumpster. I think I need another shower.”

“Seconded,” Mary said, pulling herself up into a chair and slumping down in it.

“Thirded,” Sam added, not even bothering to try and stand yet.

Rowena got to her feet and jabbed one finger in the direction of the nearest coffee cup. It shattered, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “Well at least everything seems to be in working order again.”

“Yeah, can you fix it, though?” Dean replied, glaring at the coffee-spattered shards littering the library table.

She made a disgusted noise and waved her hand, restoring the cup. “Now if someone would care to tell me where they’ve left my shoes, Fergus and I will be going.”

“Kitchen,” Dean replied, and she walked off to fetch them.

“It’s been educational,” Crowley said. “Let’s never do it again.”

Rowena returned to his side and the two of them zapped off.

“I’ll reset the wards,” Sam said, stretching his back and shuffling out of the room.

“I’m going to bed,” Mary said next, peeling herself out of her chair. “I need to sleep for a week.”

On her way out of the room she stopped to kiss the top of Dean’s head, and then did the same to Cas.

“Love you boys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Cas sat there stunned, watching her walk away. When she was gone, he turned to Dean.

“I believe your mother likes me.”

Dean snorted and clambered to his feet. “I think she’s adopted you. You passed the final test, Cas. You can officially be a Winchester now.” He held a hand out to help Cas up.

“Does that make me your brother?” Cas asked, taking hold of Dean’s hand and pulling himself to his feet.

Dean’s brow pinched together, and he didn’t let go of Cas’s hand even after he was standing. He looked down at their joined hands and spoke quietly. “I don’t know if that’s good enough anymore.”

Cas sighed, and then reached into his pocket to pull out the vial that Billie had given him. He held it out toward Dean, who reached up with his free hand to take it with a confused look at Cas.

“What’s this?”

“The last of my grace,” Cas replied, and then repeated what Billie had told him.

Dean’s confusion slowly turned into surprise, and then something strangely reminiscent of hope. “So what are you gonna do with it?”

Cas shrugged. “I gave it to you, Dean. Consider it payment for letting me stay.”

“Dude, you don’t need to pay. Especially not with this.” He tried to push the bottle back into Cas’s hand, but Cas wouldn’t have it.

“I think it’s a fair trade. You’re giving me a home, a family, and a name, and I get to spend the rest of my life with you. I think it’s more than fair.”

Dean nodded, swallowing hard, and slipped the bottle into his pocket. “I’ll take good care of you, Cas.”

Cas beamed at him. “I know you will, Dean.”

It was now or never, Dean thought. Cas had literally given him everything else. He had nothing left to lose. He pulled Cas into a hug by their still-clasped hands. Cas gratifyingly hugged him back, letting out a shaky breath against his neck and melting in his arms.

“I guess you’ll be needing a room now if you’re gonna be sleeping again,” Dean said, his cheek pressed against Cas’s jaw.

“If it’s too much trouble I could just stay with you,” Cas replied. “If… If that’s what you were offering…”

Dean leaned back far enough so that he could see Cas’s face. Yep. Now or never. He leaned in and answered Cas with a kiss. Everything was definitely going to be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hi! Thanks for reading! I hope y'all enjoyed it. This story started out because I had the audacity to suggest this to Lizbob:
> 
> "Ooh, I got it. Dean/Crowley body swap episode. Sam would probably think it was hilarious. Dean would be outraged. Cas would be so distressed."
> 
> And we rolled with it. The original intent was a heck of a lot crackier than this turned out to be, but I think the essence of the original idea is there. I should probably just post the entire rest of our conversation on tumblr or something. It was hilarious. :D
> 
> The title is from The Comedy of Errors (act 2, scene 2, lines 196-197)
> 
> I can usually be found at [@mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com) over on tumblr. Come say hi! Or better yet, explain the meta significance of Sam (in Dean's body), commenting on his discomfort at Cas (in Sam's body) standing by Dean (in Crowley's body). I hurt myself trying.


End file.
